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Google Apps

For all those who have used the factory reset option in Android phones, hoping that it would permanently delete all your personal data, here’s a shocker. Its reported from a study by Cambridge University that using that option does not erase all your data and a part of it, be it SMS’s, email’s, pictures and videos, along with contact information from your social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter can still be easily retrieved. This gives your personal information to a third party when you have passed on the phone or sold it as used.

This research was undertaken across 21 different smartphones devices across five different manufacturers and between Andriod operating versions 2.3 till 4.3.

The survey also gave the same results even when full encryption was used and at times, even the master token to access Google Apps was available even though a reset was done. This puts about 500 Million Andriod phones at risk and feedback from individual manufactures are awaited.

This latest WikiLeaks report might shock you, but seems like the National Security Agency (NSA) of America had been planning to hack Smartphone’s by using loopholes in data connections through Google Apps, so that it can implant spyware that would give them access to the phone’s data as well as communication patterns. Seems that this had been planned to give them an edge over mass movements such as the Arab Spring in the Middle East, where Smartphones and social media played a key role.

The hack is reported to be directed towards Android and Samsung phone in particular, and coming from NSA, which is reported to have a strong grip on all communications across USA, this report has been driving such panic amongst users. The project names as Irritant Horn was initiated by US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and Australia, and implants a spyware called XKEYSCORE into every App listed on Google and Samsung marketplace and also plans to use it for pushing selecting propaganda when needed, so that terrorism can be effectively combated.